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Twinning

Everywhere you drive in Ireland you pass signs proudly proclaiming that some Godforsaken village is twinned with some place you have never heard of. Even Skobieville, our nearest town is twinned with some place on the continent which is one of the biggest mistakes ever made by our continental friends – I bet someone got hung, drawn and quartered for that little miscalculation.

But what is the point of it? Is there free transport between the two twins? Can the people of one place go to their twin and demand free accommodation and discounts everywhere? What benefit is there in all of this?

I mention this because I got an email this morning from some place in France I have never heard of. It was a very nice letter, and it said that they were desperate [heh! They must be!!] to twin with a village in Ireland. They said they had heard of Glendoher from somewhere and that we sounded like the ideal match. Now, few people in Ireland have heard of Glendoher, and that’s the way we like it, so I’m not sure how the French are so fucking well informed. Unless of course it has something to do with my trip over there? I admit I may have mentioned where I came from, and I admit I may have made a couple of small exaggerations, but even I didn’t recognise the description of my village in the mail.

My own personal theory is that it is just an excuse for councillors from each town or village to go on little junkets at our expense. I can’t see any other purpose.

I wrote back to the French crowd and politely declined.

You see, we are already twinned. We were quite quick on that bandwagon, though I must add that it wasn’t anything to do with me.

We were twinned with a lovely little place in Ukraine back in March of 1986.

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Twinning — 23 Comments

Twinning was OK when a town was twinned with ONE other. Mainly for schoolkids to pen pal up ,visit each other and maybe learn something about the world. Now there’s a list a mile long and it loses it’s significance.

TT – But I still don’t understand the purpose of the whole thing. The pen pals thing makes sense, but then surely it would be simpler [and cheaper] to just twin schools? I would love to know how many people from A ever visit B simply because of twinning?

I used to be a fluent Irish speaker, but I’m afraid I don’t know the Irish for Grumpy. Glendoher is apparently called that because they found gold there once, or some such shite.

I was Head of a primary School in Wales until I retired last year and we twinned with schools in the north of Eire, Finland and Sweden – it gave us an excellent opportunity to meet others from “Greater Europe”.

Also gave me an opportunity to reaffirm the fact that Guinness tastes better on your side of the pond. I still can’t understand why Chek lager tasted like Budweiser in Finland ————

See, told you it was an excellent opportunity to devlop educational links. Must be a Celtic trait!!!

Hey, Cardi – You snuck in the back door? Of course Guinness is better here. It doesn’t take twinning to find that out? As for the flag: why don’t you kick the English out like we did? Then you can have your own flag up there. 😈